Protagonist: Female lead

Newton’s Wake: A Space Opera

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Newton's Wake: A Space Opera
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With visionary epics like The Stone Canal, The Cassini Division, and Cosmonaut Keep, award-winning Scottish author Ken MacLeod has led a revolution in contemporary science fiction, blending cutting edge science and razor-sharp political insights with pure, over-the-top interstellar adventure. Now MacLeod takes this heady mix to a new level with a stunning new SF masterwork–Newton’s Wake.

In the aftermath of the Hard Rapture–a cataclysmic war sparked by the explosive evolution of Earth’s artificial intelligences into godlike beings–a few remnants of humanity managed to survive. Some even prospered.

Lucinda Carlyle, head of an ambitious clan of galactic entrepreneurs, had carved out a profitable niche for herself and her kin by taking control of the Skein, a chain of interplanetary star-gates left behind by the posthumans. But on a world called Eurydice, a remote planet at the farthest rim of the galaxy, Lucinda stumbled upon a forgotten relic of the past that could threaten her way of life.

The Engines Of God (The Academy Book 1)

The Engines Of God (The Academy Book 1)
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The first Priscilla Hutchins novel from Jack McDevitt, hailed by Stephen King as “the logical heir to Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke.”

Humans call them the Monument-Makers. An unknown race, they left stunning alien statues on distant planets in the galaxy. Each relic is different. Each inscription defies translation. Yet all are heartbreakingly beautiful.

And for planet Earth, on the brink of disaster, they may hold the only key to survival for the entire human race.

Darkship Thieves

Darkship Thieves
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Athena Hera Sinistra never wanted to go to space.

Never wanted see the eerie glow of the Powerpods. Never wanted to visit Circum Terra. She never had any interest in finding out the truth about the Darkships.
You always get what you don’t ask for. Which must have been why she woke up in the dark of shipnight, within the greater night of space in her father’s space cruiser, knowing that there was a stranger in her room. In a short time, after taking out the stranger—who turned out to be one of her father’s bodyguards up to no good, she was hurtling away from the ship in a lifeboat to get help.
But what she got instead would be the adventure of a lifetime and perhaps a whole new world—if she managed to survive….
A Prometheus Award Winning Novel, written by a USA Today Bestseller.

Beggars in Spain

Beggars in Spain
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In a world where the slightest edge can mean the difference between success and failure, Leisha Camden is beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent … and one of an ever-growing number of human beings who have been genetically modified to never require sleep.

Once considered interesting anomalies, now Leisha and the other “Sleepless” are outcasts — victims of blind hatred, political repression, and shocking mob violence meant to drive them from human society … and, ultimately, from Earth itself.

But Leisha Camden has chosen to remain behind in a world that envies and fears her “gift” — a world marked for destruction in a devastating conspiracy of freedom … and revenge.

36 Streets

36 Streets
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Altered Carbon and The Wind-Up Girl meet Apocalypse Now in this fast-paced, intelligent, action-driven cyberpunk, probing questions of memory, identity and the power of narratives.

Lin ‘The Silent One’ Vu is a gangster and sometime private investigator living in Chinese-occupied Hanoi, in the steaming, paranoid alleyways of the 36 Streets. Born in Vietnam, raised in Australia, everywhere she is an outsider.

Through grit and courage Lin has carved a place for herself in the Vietnamese underworld where Hanoi’s crime boss, Bao Nguyen, is training her to fight and lead. Bao drives her hard; on the streets there are no second chances. Meanwhile the people of Hanoi are succumbing to Fat Victory – a dangerously addictive immersive simulation of the US-Vietnam war.

When an Englishman comes to Hanoi on the trail of his friend’s murderer, Lin’s life is turned upside down. She is drawn into the grand conspiracies of the neon gods – of regimes and mega-corporations – as they unleash dangerous new technologies.

Lin must confront the immutable moral calculus of unjust wars. She must choose: family, country, or gang. Blood, truth, or redemption. No choice is easy on the 36 Streets.

Islands in the Net

Islands in the Net
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In a near-future new age of corporate control, hacker mercenaries, and electronic terrorism, a public relations executive on the rise finds herself caught in the violent epicenter of a data war

Two decades into the twenty-first century, the world’s nations are becoming irrelevant. Corporations are the true global powers, with information the most valuable currency, while the smaller island nations have become sanctuaries for data pirates and terrorists. A globe-trotting PR executive for the large corporate economic democracy Rizome Industries Group, Laura Webster is present when a foreign representative is assassinated on Rizome soil during a conference for offshore data havens. Dispatched immediately on an international mission of diplomacy, Laura hopes she can make a difference in a volatile, unsteady world, but instead finds herself trapped on the front lines of rapidly escalating third-world hostilities and caught up in an inescapable net of conspiracy, terrorism, post-millennial voodoo, and electronic warfare.

During the 1980s, science fiction luminary Bruce Sterling envisioned the future . . . and hit it almost dead-on. The author who, along with William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and Rudy Rucker, helped create and define the cyberpunk subgenre imagines a world of tomorrow in Islands in the Net that bears a striking—and disturbing—resemblance to our present-day information-age reality. Nominated for the Hugo and Locus Awards and winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, Sterling’s extraordinary novel is a gripping, eye-opening, and remarkably prescient science fiction classic.

Tatja Grimm’s World

Tatja Grimm's World
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Multiple Hugo Award winner Vernor Vinge’s first full-length novel

As a mud-spattered youngster, Tatja quickly realized she was different from the stone-age primitives with whom she grew up. Her insatiable curiosity and thirst for knowledge could not be quenched among them; she had to explore and learn more about the strange world she lived on.

She finds the bastion of all culture, arts, entertainment and history for the entire planet, the seven-hundred-year-old science fiction magazine Fantasie, which is produced entirely aboard a gargantuan floating vessel the size of a small city. But despite the printing presses, sail-powered vessels, and mind-expanding technology, Tatja is still dissatisfied. Rising through the ranks, she finds that the people on the enormous barge are just as unintelligent as the primitives she grew up with. But others have come to the planet who not only challenge her intelligence, but offer her a tantalizing opportunity to uncover answers to mysteries that have long plagued her.

But with opportunity comes risk. And if she acts unwisely, she could bring doom to the only world she knows.

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary ‘Jacky’ Faber, Ship’s Boy

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary 'Jacky' Faber, Ship's Boy
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Life as a ship’s boy aboard HMS Dolphin is a dream come true for Jacky Faber. Gone are the days of scavenging for food and fighting for survival on the streets of eighteenth-century London. Instead, Jacky is becoming a skilled and respected sailor as the crew pursues pirates on the high seas.

There’s only one problem: Jacky is a girl. And she will have to use every bit of her spirit, wit, and courage to keep the crew from discovering her secret. This could be the adventure of her life–if only she doesn’t get caught. . . .

Pirate of the Prophecy (Empress of the Endless Sea Book 1)

Pirate of the Prophecy (Empress of the Endless Sea Book 1)
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prequel to The Dragons of Dorcastle (Pillars of Reality serie)

On the world of Dematr, the Emperor and his legions rule over the lands on the eastern side of the Sea of Bakre, and the Great Guilds rule over the Emperor and his subjects. The Mechanics Guild, whose members claim they came from the stars, controls technology far beyond that of the swords and sailing ships of the common people, while the Mage Guild wields strange powers that terrify all who face them.

Jules, an orphan from the Imperial city of Landfall, has fought her way up to become an officer in training with the Emperor’s fleet. But her plans and her life are shattered when a Mage prophesizes that a daughter of her line will one day overthrow the Great Guilds and free the world. In that moment, the prophecy takes over her life. The Mages plot to kill her, the Mechanics try to find ways to use her, and the Emperor seeks to coerce her into having his children.

Unwilling to surrender her life to serving the prophecy, Jules makes her escape by joining the crew of a pirate ship. As she fights for her comrades’ freedom as well as her own, she learns that the world is finally changing. But if that change triggers all-out war between the Great Guilds and the Empire, it may well devastate the world rather than free it.

The Tears of Ishtar Paperback by Michael Ehart

The Tears of Ishtar Paperback by Michael Ehart
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An ancient evil… an immortal warrior.

From the sands and cities of the ancient middle-east comes an epic story of bloodshed, love and betrayal. Award-winning fantasy author Michael Ehart spins a tale that echoes with the blood and thunder of the golden age.

Bound by an ancient curse, serving her master in bitter unwillingness, the Servant of the Manthycore must lure the greedy, the unsuspecting and the unwary into the desert to feed the insatiable beast to whom she is bound. Centuries of combat and murder have made her a swordswoman whispered of in the marketplaces, feared in the back-alleys and sung about by the campfires of the caravans. The passing centuries of betrayal and death have stolen her humanity and even her name, leaving only a glimmer of who she once was. Her only hope is to someday meet a greater warrior than she, and so be freed.

Striding across the background of civilization in its youth, in the time of the first great heroes and the cities they built, she becomes more than a woman, and as her legend grows so does her determination to someday be free of the great beast who she serves. Goddesses, bandits, soldiers and kings fall beneath her sword as she fights her way to discover a path to freedom.

Fantasy legend Michael Moorcock raves: “Michael Ehart is an impressive talent!” And reviewers from all over the world agree that the Servant of the Manthycore is one of the great characters of modern heroic fantasy. The Tears of Ishtar brings together her entire saga in one blood-soaked, thrilling novel that will have your pulse pounding from the very first page. Beautifully illustrated by renowned Sword and Sorcery artist Miko, and encased within a stunning, original cover by Johnney Perkins, this will be one novel you won’t want to put down!